I actually have had a theory since my teens (as an autistic kid with idiots for parents, disgusting school and so on, so some need to escape that), that German music and German visual design feel so clean and attractive in a very vanilla way, because that's what was the prestigious kind of culture for the British Empire in its prime and till WWI, and that survived by inertia even a couple decades past Germans having their teeth kicked in during WWII.
What we feel to be most classical is German music, German philosophy, German perception of military history, German ideological approaches to politics (today's left-wing movements are still mostly that or at least track their lineage to that, and today's right-wing movements may have kinda diverged, but still like to fuzzily hint at one Austrian painter), and German visual design (what's considered "neutral" today, fonts like Helvetica, the way accents are made, etc).
What I'm coming at - common perception of human beauty in the West may be kinda affected by typical German appearance, that specifically, more than by typical French or typical British or typical Italian appearance.
That’s dense and clearly something you’ve thought about deeply. Still wrong tho:
German cultural and intellectual influence is super significant, esp during the 18th/19th centuries (think Goethe, Beethoven, Kant), but the perception of beauty and aesthetics in the West has way broader roots. Western beauty standards largely come from antiquity—Greek and Roman ideals (symmetry, proportion, harmony). This gets revived during the Renaissance, primarily by Italian and French artists, not German ones.
German musos, philosopers, and designs, their prominence peaked in different eras (e.g., Enlightenment, Romanticism, Bauhaus) but didn’t shape Western standards of beauty or culture. Visual design like Helvetica became iconic due to functionality and simplicity, not just cos they were German...
Re physical beauty, Germanic traits might contribute to regional preferences, but broader Western standards remain influenced by Mediterranean archetypes.
I find a much higher percentage of people outside the US as being more attractive. I think it has a lot to do with just being healthier and eating better. Every time I visit someplace, it's the first thing I always notice. That and how much cleaner they keep places.
Being healthy, of course, does contribute to one's attractiveness.
But human beauty is really too subjective.
We may dislike people seeming familiar. We may like people seeming familiar more.
We may like people similar to us in appearance. We may particularly dislike people similar to us in appearance.
Also clothes affect people's appearance quite a lot. If people in the area you do shopping for clothes are in average less like you in appearance and weight and everything, and people in some other area more, you might find them more attractive simply because the choice of clothes is a bit better, and the habit of wearing better fitting clothes.
And another very important component is what you expect to see. I mean, "how much cleaner they keep places" ... which countries have you visited?
Straight lines don't have artifacts (car door, walkie talkies). Text, including off-axis text, is perfectly fine ("POLIZEI" on the right guy's uniform). The compression around the hair looks normal. Last time I checked, Even "generative" AI couldn't get those things right.
The perspective is correct on all the the obscured people, which is rare. The people in the background have different heights as well, which seems to coincide with the distance to the curb on the street.
Europeans can be more attractive, they have better or free dental, orthodontics, more strict laws on food quality/ composition and sometimes better personal health habits.
Sure they are all pretty, but if they were 9s in Michigan they would be 7s in Germany.